January 18, 2017- Do You Meditate?

I am a believer in meditation; it brings abundant gifts: mindfulness, self-awareness, ability to keep priorities clear, facilitation of kindness and patience, and many more….However, I am also a believer in all the many different forms of meditation. They run the gamut from the formal, sitting meditation with norms and procedures (example pictured above) to the more casual, relaxed forms like the practice of “Stopping” (click it for info) or, as Mary Oliver says, just lounging under a tree.

Here is Oliver’s whole poem:

“ON MEDITATING, SORT OF”

Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?Some days I fall asleep, or land in that
even better place—half asleep—where the world,
spring, summer, autumn, winter—
flies through my mind in its
hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.

So I just lie like that, while distance and time
reveal their true attitudes: they never
heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.

Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints—
all that glorious, temporary stuff.